Posted on 09/26/2006 9:48:03 AM PDT by neverdem
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Clip and save, for this may come in handy: If you mock Islam with a drawing or a novel, you get riots and dead people. News of mishandled holy books yields riots and dead people. Insufficiently reverent short films by a Dutchman yields a dead person, specifically the Dutchman.
Now we add this detail: Quoting medieval religious colloquies is a reasonable justification for burning churches, shooting a nun and holding up signs demanding that the pope convert to Islam or saw off his own head. (There have been reports of carpal tunnel syndrome among radical Islam's enforcers, and they have requested we all help out.)
This is a new twist: Now history itself cannot be discussed. Since it's difficult to predict what else will enflame the devout, Islam has to be treated with unusual deference, like a 3-year-old child with anger management problems.
But it's not what we say that truly offends. It's what we are. The West's lack of interest in joining the Ummah is an affront in itself, and we broadcast our sins in High Infidelity. If you believed that the West's apostasy was an affront to God, you'd spend your leisure hours torching straw popes, too.
Progressives at home and abroad seem oddly unconcerned. "Islamophobia," after all, is just a product of the BushCo junta's relentless fearmongering, and Benedict is the Nazi pope who personally swipes the condoms from people's bedroom drawers.
But it's an inconvenient truth, to coin a phrase, when the ranters show up with vibrating uvulas demanding the pope's assassination. (Would they be satisfied with a docudrama version? It would go over big at Cannes.)
It's inconvenient when glowering young men line the walk outside Westminster Abbey with anti-pope signs, thereby showing that England's radical Muslims have sunk to the level of idiots who protest funerals with "GOD HATES FAGS" placards. Such images cause a momentary pang of dismay among some: That's not helpful, chaps. Not helpful at all.
See, the real problem is the West and its bluenose brigade, its Wal-Marts and Hummers and Big Gulp lifestyles. The Christianists, as some clever equivocators call them, are an impediment to Utopia as great as the terrorists. No less a philosopher than Rosie O'Donnell said so on "The View" recently, proclaiming Christian fundamentalists and Islamicists equal threats to America. They're both judgmental — boo, hiss! — and that makes them equal.
O'Donnell had a point, one supposes. Using the legislative process to pass faith-based initiatives, driving jets into skyscrapers: madness, everywhere.
At the risk of making a generalization: The secular right seems more tolerant of Christianity, and skeptical toward large swaths of Islam. The secular left often seems annoyed and contemptuous towards American religion — unless the pastor on the dais insists Jesus would have been a board member of Planned Parenthood — and oddly protective of Islam. Not because they believe in it; heavens, no. Some progressives are simply besotted by any civilization not their own.
Others have no vocabulary to oppose its more radical manifestations, because, well, we cannot judge other cultures. (Unless they're in the American South.) Others are less concerned by Islamicists because they have greater dislike for the people who oppose radical Islam, who are probably bigots. (Boo, hiss!) When those theo-neos get tough on radical Islam, it's just a convenient mask for their dislike of the Scary Non-Christian Dusky Hordes. Besides, what about the Crusades and the Inquisition? Huh? OK, then.
Thus the most enlightened and well-intentioned beneficiaries of the human civilization excuse or wish away the words of their most implacable opponents. It'll take something drastic to change their minds. A dirty bomb? Maybe. A demonstration in Pakistan in favor of Wal-Mart? That would certainly reorder some opinions.
In the meantime, we will learn to say less and less about more and more. As the grim cliche has it: If you say Islam isn't always a religion of peace, the Islamicists will kill you. This doesn't make them hypocrites, of course. The grave is a very peaceful place.
They need a little intellectual honesty in Islam. al Jazeera needs a facelift.
I really can't say this enough: Despite the atrocity of events like 9/11, Western civilization has not been pushed to the wall. But put us in a fight or flight situation and we will crush the entire Muslim civilization if we have to, with every means at our disposal, including nukes. When it comes down to us or them for survival, it's going to be us, and they're going to cry their eyes out as we rain death and destruction down on their cities and populations. Be careful of what you wish for Muslims, you may not like the outcome.
Tell the story loud and clear to our childen: islam (small i used to denote disrespect) is civilizations boat anchor.
But doesn't a boat anchor denote usefulness (i.e. keeping a boat in one place?) I see islam and all scuzzlims as civilization's veneral disease. Totally unwanted, horrified that one has to live with it and impatiently waiting for a cure to get rid of it.
Perhaps it is time to start offending moslims on a regular basis by all who believe in the civilized world.
Brigitte Gabriel is on target with her book, "Because They Hate". It just came out last week, and it's already stirring the pot.
Great post.
Germany banned Mozart.
Sounds a lot like Bill Clinton. You mention the true history of things such as the lack of dealing with Bin Laden to Clinton, and he goes totally nuclear on you........ hmmmmmm... maybe Bill didn't go after those guys because he knew they had a lot in common?
Isn't THAT the chilling truth........ the Japanese were warned not to mess with us, that they would wake an angry sleeping giant (I forget who warned them in such fashion but it happened) - and they ignored it. God help the enemy who really awakens us........
Common sense . . oh the dearth of it.
Seventy-two virgins (temporarily at least) provided for perpetual sexual pleasure for eternity . . . can any of them think in terms of the weight of such a roody pooh situation for ETERNITY?
Lemme see . .
ABDUL: (in Eternity for a million years, so far, with no end in sight, eating grapes and calls in Ex-Virgin # 48 and as he munches on a grape he says wearily, . . . .
"Uh, Number 48 Ex-Virgin, I am so disenchanted, not only with you and your ex-virgin status, but also with grapes almost exclusively for every meal. Sigh . ."
EX-VIRGIN # 48: "I am so sorry, Abdul, shall I call in Number 49 now?"
The general who engineered the attack on Pearl harbor said that.
IIRC, I've found James Lileks there maybe a few or so times a month.
Admiral Yamamoto said that *after* the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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